SROYS

Did you know that I don’t want to buy a wallet at 64% off? Yeah… it’s unbelievable right! But I am happy with the one I have. Did you ask me what kind of deals I was interested in when I first gave you my email address and location? Did you ask me my gender or age?

Clearly you didn’t! You do need to reduce friction but you do also want me to come back to check out new deals don’t you?

I had to really tear away my hand from the mouse and look away to stop myself from buying that ROTI MAKER!!

And how am I supposed to concentrate on a deal over here?

Man! you CAN do better. There are 5 main problems here:

• Personalized display of listings
• Information overloading - too many deals on one page
• Better categorization
• More humans at the top
• Try new ideas and don’t copy groupon

Solution - go social and be more human.

• Let users create a selection of deals to send to their friends.
  
  
• Let users share individual deals on their social networks (without buying).
  
  
• Be less greedy - let the merchants profit a bit more. Reduce fees and work with your merchants - this is a new industry. Divert some of your advertising funds into really supporting merchants and customers.
  
  
• Send merchants stickers with promo code and don’t charge any fees on those buys. The same advice as on the justdial thoughts.
  
  
• Give more than discounts - offer relationships. Create more than just price point gains for customers - let merchants create list of buyers - tell them to enter the coupon codes which get used and get the data about who is buying what and when.
  
  
• Create more value for the merchants who should be allowed to connect directly with their buyers (let them send new deals to old buyers - charge small fee for emailer) - you will have access to very important buyer data. You need to impress the merchants to go big. Create a CRM around deals.
  
  
• When I want to buy a tv - my first though is not “are there any good deal on this on deal….com?” Make the search box BIG and PROMINENT - like airbnb.com. Use the search info to identify what people want.
  
  
• I won’t refer a friend for you 100 bucks - stop showing off your money - it’ll dry up soon if you don’t become decent. Venture capitals should put good human beings at the top - not cut throat top sales professional.
  
  
• Deals work well for the merchant when you can gather a lot of people buying the same thing at the same time. Make it fair - allow deals to go live if a certain number is hit. Refund money if it doesn’t - tell the customers about how you care about your merchants and why it didn’t work out. Here’s you money back. The customer will now trust you and buy from you without a second thought. PLUS they will tell their friends.
  
  
• From an Indian perspective online payment don’t work well yet - so ask merchants for some cash on delivery seed money - send out the coupon and ask the customer to mark it used via an email query after the end of campaign. Trust and confirm coupon use with your merchants and charge them accordingly. Maybe allow a certain percentage of COD for new clients. Too many fluctuations and you ban them. This uses Derek Sivers principle of “Don’t punish everyone for one person’s mistake”.
  
  
• Just because you have money right now doesn’t mean you should be throwing it on the problem. Search for “Television Deals” and you’ll see deal website ads and the landing page take you to their home page with NO TELEVISION DEALS! Stop wasting money and optimize your campaign. You’ll not only get more sales, you’ll spend way way less because of your landing page score.